NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched in 1999. Since that time it has been used to study the Universe at wavelengths 0.12nm to 12nm that don’t get through the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Chandra’s Cosmos” introduces the types of objects and cosmic events that can be seen in X-rays such as supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, very hot gas in galaxy clusters, quasars etc.

It is a beautiful and informative book and certainly talks about dark matter and black holes as is mentioned in the book’s subtitle. It is full of beautiful color images that combine data from Chandra and occasionally also data from Hubble Space Telescope or some other telescope.

I think Tucker really achieved what he was out to do with this book – show the coolest objects that have been observed with Chandra, but in a well-integrated way so that you don’t have a list of objects and images, that aren’t connected. Instead you have very detailed information on who was doing the research, why it’s interesting, what we still don’t know and it even mixes in a little bit of history of astronomy etc.

Although at first look it might seem as just a picture book or more of a coffee-table-book, it’s not, but it would function as a slightly more informative kind 🙂

There’re also several details that I really liked about my edition of the book (Smithsonian Books, 2017) is first the little silver Chandra telescope on the hardcover and secondly the fact that the paper isn’t glossy. I feel it’s important to have well illustrated books about science that could be given to children without having fingerprints all over the photos after just a short while.

The Orion Nebula – closest place to the Solar System where massive stars form

The Origin of Stars by Michael D. Smith

Finished reading on November 1st, 2017

Rating: 10/10

How are stars born? What processes lead to the birth of a star? And what conditions are necessary for star formation? Those might be some of the questions that lead you to read Professor Michael D. Smith’s book “The Origin of Stars”, which was first published in 2004 by Imperial College Press.

This book is aimed for any reader, who is interested in how stars form,and although it gets into the equations governing star formation in a lot of detail, that shouldn’t scare off even say a determined high-school student.

I found the book and the topic fascinating, and more so than I first thought it would be. As far as I knew or remembered from astronomy lectures from a few years ago – matter collapses, temperature on the inside rises, thermonuclear reactions start and poof – you’ve got yourself a brand new star! Or that’s at least how I’d have described it. Now I know better.
In “The Origin of Stars” you find out more about the environment in which stars are born, what prompts the formation of stars and what will eventually stop star formation in a molecular cloud. You also find out about the different stages that a protostar goes through in it’s collapse to in the end accrete matter from its surrounding disk to eventually become a star. And what happens to the environment in which it’s located? What kind of objects that have been observed are related to star formation?

There’s a lot of fascinating details from how come newborn stars don’t rotate so fast as to lose their matter because of its envelope achieving escape speed. And how do different kinds of stars form and what can form if certain conditions aren’t met. The book is packed with information.

Now to get away from my excitement about star formation, I’ll leave you with one last important bit of information, that I’m sure everyone will eventually need in their life. If you happen across Lithium in an objects hot atmosphere, you can be pretty sure that you’ve either happened across a really young star, or a brown dwarf. And if you wait astronomically long enough, you’ll find out which it is – if it loses the Lithium after a while, then it’s a young star, if it keeps its Lithium – brown dwarf! If it keeps its precious stones – it’s Thráin.

Who were some women who were known for their astronomical observations, calculations or texts? This is what Mary Brück’s book deals with together with how they got their start in astronomy.

The book doesn’t only include women, who made such discoveries as finding new comets etc, but rather also includes women who made a contribution in a different way, maybe by translating a text, writing a commentary on it or writing popular books to spark the interest of young readers.

It is fascinating and at some times a sad book to read – fascinating in the amazing women in portrays, but sad in the challenges and roadblocks that those brilliant and enthusiastic women faced because of being women.

In it you can read about such famous women in science as Caroline Herschel, Mary Somerville, but also of women who might have been working in the shadow of their husband or brother, such as Annie Maunder.

I found it especially interesting how mostly (with the exception being Caroline Herschel’s mother) the families and parents were supportive in these cases, when their daughter/sisters wanted to learn more about astronomy or science in general, and how brothers would help their sisters in gaining an education in science. The sad part though ofcourse was to read about how a few of them didn’t really get to practice astronomy in the same way after marriage to a not really astronomy-friendly man, or who had to stop the hobby or work for any other reason.

The book provides short biographies of more than twenty intelligent women who took an interest in the stars. It is just sad to think that now they would have totally different lives, there wouldn’t be so many difficulties in their way, but there would still not be an equal number of male and female astronomers or scientists in general.

“Welcome To The Universe” is an introductory text to astrophysics and cosmology for the undergraduate student who isn’t learning a science major, or for the well educated adult whose interest in astronomy has gotten further from the usual popular science books that steer clear of formulas and equations.

This book is about some of the ideas in astrophysics and cosmology that are necessary for getting a further understanding of the fields without taking a full mathematical astrophysics or cosmology course.

As such I think it really is perfect book for the intended reader – it doesn’t offend the reader by assuming that equations would go just over their heads, but it also doesn’t get too deeply into them to be of much use for an astronomy major.

The book is quite enjoyable, well illustrated and covers some fascinating topics for an introductory astronomy course. I wish everyone would read this book – you don’t get too much technical details, but just the bare essentials. If you want to find out more – find another book,but this will certainly whet your appetite.

The book has been written so, that you can tell who wrote which chapter, but despite having three authors in makes a complete, an fluid book – you might not even notice that there are three authors, except for when their achievements or work is mentioned specifically.

I got this book right at the beginning of a vacation and I hoped to finish reading it in two weeks, one of which I spent travelling. My book is quite a massive hardcover edition, but I was motivated enough to carry it with me for about three weeks. It was worth it – it was great travel reading in the sense that the beginning chapters are quite simple. However a few chapters in I did start to wonder whether there would even be any new for me information in the book. For a while there wasn’t any. Then there were tiny examples of what was to come – by the end of the book there were fascinating chapters that presented information that I hadn’t read before.

It’s a great book. My rating of 8/10 comes from me not being really one of the intended audience and that I got mildly bored at the beginning of the book (boredom went away by about the middle). It really deserves 10/10.

Wrinkles in Time is a book about an important discovery in cosmology, the team of scientists behind it, the journey to it a for the most part George Smoot’s part in it all.

The discovery in question is the small anisotropies that were discovered by the COBE team that showed that gravity is sufficient to get the structures we see in the Universe now – such as galaxy clusters etc,from the Big Bang.

I’ve had this book sitting in my bookshelf for several years, and as it often-times happens with books that do that, I had forgotten what it was about, why I had wanted to read it,etc.

Now that I’ve just finished reading it, I’d tell the past me that you should have started reading it a lot sooner.
It’s not just another cosmology book written for the general public – it’s much more personal, specific and very interesting.
There is quite a bit of suspense in this book, and adventure, so at times you might forget that you’re reading about a discovery in cosmology that earned the scientists behind it a Nobel prize in physics.

In this book you can read about how the COBE satellite came into being, what was discovered from its data, and also why did the scientists also have to visit a jungle in Brazil and the South Pole, to get to the knowledge we now have.

Just to mention also – you don’t need to know a lot of mathematics or physics to read and understand all of this book, it explains everything relevant you need to know. Do remember though, that the book was first published in 1993..

A great short introduction to some fascinating aspects of astrophysics, quantum mechanics, cosmology and relativity theory that is highly readable, doesn’t get into extraneous details and although it was first published in 1987, it is still accurate.

This has been a book that I’ve picked up and put down after reading a couple of pages several times in life – partly because of not being quite certain about what level of knowledge I should have to read it, and partly because I tend to choose books that have been published more recently over older, although classic books of nonfiction.

So if I’d ever have a chance of inventing a time machine in past to try and find out what I know about this book in present I’d say – the book is certainly easy enough reading if you’ve studied physics in high-school, you don’t need to go in search of an encyclopedia to understand what Hawking is writing about, because he mostly explains everything anyway. Also if you’re afraid that a famous scientist’s writing style might be awfully boring and just terrible – don’t fear, you’ll be through the book in no time and in search of another book written by Hawking.

In general I’d highly recommend it. Even if you’ve read a lot of nonfiction books about astronomy,cosmology and physics, this book is still a great and interesting little book to read.

“The Cosmic Web” is about the largest structures in the Universe, how it was discovered, who were behind it, what were some other competing ideas and how we see it all now.

In this book Gott tells the story of his and some other cosmologists’ part in discovering the structure of the universe that could be called a cosmic web, but has at other times been referred to as a cell-like structure etc.

In the book you can learn more about what were the early ideas of how the great structures in the Universe might look like, and what would be necessary for their formation, and we see that from two perspectives – from the US school, where the so-called meatball theory prevailed and also from the Soviet school where the ideas took more of a pancake shape that all lead to more of a Swiss cheese type of structure.

The book gives a lot of details and background information about the structure’s discovery and what led to it with a few detours to Gott’s own life in science, which makes for nice pauses between the more mathematical parts of the book.

As a book on a specific topic in cosmology, it’s interesting and illuminating, but definitely not an easy read, but you do go over some of the cosmic microwave background surveys, the accelerating inflation of the universe and the inflation theory and the possible end of the Universe as well, so you see the context of the main theme better.

It was really a great book, just it requires a bit of effort from the part of the reader.

This book was first translated into English and published in about 1904, whilst it was originally published in French with a title that would translate to Astronomy for Women.

I started reading this book on a particularly hot and sunny day while showing the Sun to passers-by through a H-alpha telescope. I just really wanted something to do while there wasn’t anyone around, and I couldn’t really just stand in the scorching Sun and observe it for hours.

Astronomy for Amateurs talks about pretty much everything that you’d need to know when first dipping your toes into stargazing – what are constellations, how to find a specific one, how to find the planets, how do they look like, when to expect a meteor shower, what comets are, etc.

All of it is written (and translated) with a beautiful style that at first did seem a bit patronizing and strangely pointed – Flammarion starts out with a long tirade about female astronomers and their exploits and with telling how the young mothers should guide their children’s interest towards astronomy and that there’s nothing difficult in it. – That was all quite baffling until I got to the note that said that the original work was titled Astronomy for Women.

Well it was the beginning of 20th century, so it’s quite an achievement in itself that there was a book aimed towards women.

As for the actual information that you can get from the book – there are obviously some things that are outdated, but it’s not the majority of the work, but rather just bits and pieces – the basics (distances to planets and their sized for example) are mostly correct, although there’s the occasional bit where he writes that the largest object between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is just about 100km in circumference, whilst Ceres in reality is about ten times that.

I liked the experience of reading it, even though some things were just plain funny – like Flammarion’s description of Lunar craters as volcanic craters (there are some volcanic features on the Moon, but most of the craters are impact craters from meteorite collisions), and how the Sun gets its energy.

If you’re interested in the level of knowledge and the style of a popular science guide book of ca 1900, it’s a good choice for reading. But if you’re just wanting to know more about astronomy – choose something a bit more current.

This book started out pretty much the same way as many books about cosmology do – with Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein, Fritz Zwicky and others and the discoveries that the Universe is expanding, that there was a specific beginning in time for it, dark matter and dark energy etc.

But then for my surprise I found myself reading about black holes and then back to the more usual for cosmology – cosmic microwave background and the fact that the Universe is expanding ever faster. But then in the end you get to read even about SETI and at some point you’ll find a long-ish tirade about how modern science in many fields is done in large teams and how Nobel prize doesn’t do justice for discoveries that have been made by large teams – someone will always be left out, who shouldn’t be.

In the beginning I found myself getting slightly bored while reading this book – how many books about Hubble and Einstein can I possibly even bare to read? There’s only a certain amount after which you feel they’re maybe not that exciting people to read about in EVERY book (but you can’t get away without them in case of the history of 20th century cosmology and astronomy etc).

I did find however that this book has a great side to it, that I haven’t met in (as far as I remember) any others – namely the author also discusses why scientists who came up with an idea before might not have been the people known for a discovery. That made for very interesting reading.

If you’ve never read about 20th century discoveries in cosmology (and some mentions of a lot earlier scientists and philosophers), it is a great book to read – you get a pretty much full 360 degree view of the most important ideas and the stories behind them with some extra things to think about.

I probably would have given this book a 10/10 if I wouldn’t be so fed up with reading about history of 20th century astronomy all the time, so 8/10 is even really high.

Also there’s no mathematics or difficult concepts that you would need to grasp to read this book, so it is quite an easy read. And there’s an awesome long”Suggested Further Reading” section at the end. It’s awesome because I’ve read a lot of those books and I know they’re great, and everything I haven’t read I’ve added to my To-Read list :).

The New Cosmos: Answering Astronomy’s Big Questions by David J. Eicher

Finished reading on April 16th, 2016

Rating: 9/10

There are certain topics that you end up against now and again when for example dealing with young children at an observatory – you can be sure that someone will ask about black holes, someone might ask why Pluto isn’t a planet etc. This book pretty much also answers anything that an intelligent person who’s slightly interested in astronomy might ask or want to know about.

In that sense it’s an excellent book – it doesn’t make things too simple and short, but rather goes into quite a bit of depth about the history behind some of the topics – the size and shape of the Milky Way, the end of the Universe etc.

In this book you get a decent amount of information that should be enough for a first contact with astronomy.

I thought that the big questions have been chosen well – couldn’t think of anything more that really would have to be in there, nor was there anything that you’d really not need to know.

I’m sure it’s great reading if you only ever choose to read one book about astronomy. However if you keep up to date with astronomy news and literature anyway, then this book is more of a reminder of who were/are the people behind some of the knowledge we now have about the universe.

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I did have fun reading this book right after finishing Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. The biggest difference was that while reading Cosmos I could hear it in Sagan’s voice and that in The New Cosmos I wasn’t thinking “…but now we know more”.

My favorite bit in the book :

Too few people anchor themselves in reality in our culture that seems to be centered on laying back and watching s stream of mostly nonsense on TV, in movies, and online.